What is happening in the cultural sector?
COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on the cultural sector at the global, national and local levels. This impact has been recognised by UNESCO in its publication entitled Culture in Crisis, which claims that: “Around the world, the livelihoods of artists and cultural professionals have been profoundly affected by lockdown and social distancing measures. The precarious nature of their work has made them particularly vulnerable to the economic shocks caused by the crisis, which have, in turn, exacerbated the creative sector’s pre-existing volatility and inequalities. Artists and cultural professionals have lost their jobs and around the world, the sector is fighting to survive” (UNESCO, 2020).
According to the study entitled “The COVID decade: understanding the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19”, published by the British Academy in the UK, the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic could continue to have an impact for the next decade (British Academy, 2021). The current circumstances have exacerbated the structural problems stemming from the needs and shortages that the cultural sector is experiencing and gaps in the application of cultural rights on a global level. The situation is further aggravated when gender is taken into account, as women and the LGBTQIA+ community experience inequalities more acutely than others. It was in this context, and in response to these issues, that the Ministry of Culture decided to promote the production of a Recovery Plan for Cultural Industries and the Arts by 2030, with the technical support of UNESCO and the support of the Swedish government.
What is the Recovery Plan for Cultural Industries and the Arts by 2030?
This Plan is a strategy developed by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture that seeks not only to design a series of medium- and short-term measures to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on the sector, but also to resolve the issues related to the practice of cultural and artistic professions which has been highlighted by the health crisis.
The UNESCO office in Peru is providing a technical assistance for the elaboration of the plan. This technical support consisted in developing a methodology on which to build the plan, with the premise of taking into account the real needs experienced by the sector in its diversity, a process to which all actors of the sector at national level have participated. The plan is designed to focus on the implementation of a national participatory process through a series of round tables led by the General Directorate of Cultural Industries and Arts and the Decentralised Directorates of Culture.
The first part of the process, which began this year, served to gather information in each of the country’s 25 regions by means of one roundtable dialogue in each region and 6 in metropolitan Lima. The second part of the participatory process will involve feeding back on how to organise everything that the regional round table dialogues have worked on, as well as creating a structure on which to base the implementation of the plan.
The Ministry of Culture has set up a Consultative Committee for the Recovery Plan for Cultural Industries and the Arts, made up of representatives of 31 civil society organisations and cultural institutions, to support in the designing of the plan and contribute to its construction, adoption and sustainability. This process will continue throughout 2021 and is intended to have the plan completed by the end of the year.
